We had pizza for dinner last night. So today — as most pizza eaters know — was ‘leftover pizza’ day. Here’s the deal: my beloved must heat his. I eat it hot the first night, cold after. I actually like cold pizza! […]

Love is, I think, like ribbon. It’s beautiful, for one thing (I adore pretty ribbon!). But it tangles, gets easily wrinkled and needs care to last. At the holidays, when I’m going through SKEINS of it, I find myself thinking […]

“Instead of asking ourselves, “How can I find security and happiness?” we could ask ourselves, “Can I touch the center of my pain? Can I sit with suffering, both yours and mine, without trying to make it go away? Can […]

At some point, we need to stop identifying with our weaknesses and shift our allegiance to our basic goodness. ~ Pema Chodron I love this directive. And I especially like that it comes from a Buddhist thinker I so admire […]

I spent most of June this summe, in a graduate Institute with teachers of all grade levels (k-university), in several content areas, and from varied backgrounds. The seminar lasts for three weeks. During week 2 we discuss cultures: what each […]

This is the ‘prayer’ I’m offering each day over my dozen names, during Lent. It’s the first Buddhist prayer I learned, and remains my favourite. Whenever I’m very stressed, this is what I repeat. It isn’t a prayer in the […]

I usually try to keep Lent in some fashion. It’s a wonderful practice, to offer up a piece of your everyday life for good. To think of your everyday life as a kind of, well, prayer. As a Buddhist, I […]

Anger. Greed. Delusion. Ignorance. Attachment. Aversion. The three root Buddhist mind poisons. The first time I heard them, I knew immediately which one was mine. (Anger, just in case you’re wondering — this will come as no surprise to friends, […]

So you may be thinking: New Year’s resolutions? It’s the middle of January! But it’s also (almost) Chinese New Year (January 23rd, just FYI). And this is a big one for me — my birth cycle returns. Born in the […]

Britton Gildersleeve

Britton Gildersleeve is a 'third culture kid.' Years spent living on the margins - in places with exotic names and food shortages - have left her with a visceral response to folks ‘without,’ as well as a desire to live her Buddhism in an engaged fashion. She’s a writer and a teacher, the former director of a federal non-profit for teachers who write. She believes that if we talk to each other, we can learn to love each other (but she's still learning how). And she believes in tea. She is (still) working on her beginner's heart ~